Ponder the Starry Night
by Lady Jaida
Summary: A repost of an old SanzouxHakkai. Hakkai's life as it was and is and now will be, with a little bit of Sanzou thrown into the mix. R&R, please!
1. Grasshoppers

Reposted because ff.net did cruel things to my NC-17s, this is a SanzouxHakkai written a whiles back, but it's one of my favorite works. Enjoy and, as always, R&R.****

Ponder the Starry Night

**Part One: Grasshoppers  
**  
The grasshoppers in the low-cut grass rustle their bodies like paper on paper. The thin, summer-worn sound is quiet and restless, though it is settled, as well. All grasshoppers make the same sort of music: this is and always will be my ground, my home, my low-cut grass; I sing to the stars, and I will never see them. Their green, comical bodies are hidden, scattered over the back lawn. Only their longing sounds can be heard on the heavy, humid air.

Cho Hakkai sits with his weighted hands pressed palm down on his knees. In the summer air he wears a light cotton t-shirt, borrowed. His glasses are off and it is obvious by the way he is smiling that he cannot see the world, not even when a mosquito buzzes by the very tip of his nose.

This is the way he likes his nights.

The warm wood of the porch steps is firm beneath his bare toes, and a beam is solid against his back. The house was once a tree and will one day be the earth among the roots of a tree and will one day after that be a house again. It makes his bangs tickle his forehead, to know this replica of the karmic circle. The grasshoppers know it as they rustle, a chorus of unimportant and lazy bugs. In the winter, their bodies will curl up like lifeless corn husks left too long in the raging sun, for instead of preparing for winter they played music all day and on into the dark night.

A breeze wanders along his skin. The wood is far from alive beneath his body. Here is where Cho Hakkai remembers: I was merely in the earth once, spread out on the earth once, above these earthly things now. 

He does not believe, however, that he will ever rise to embrace the swirl of the star-strewn sky.

Instead, he watches the low-cut grass stretched out before him and shifts his hands on his knees. He has created a place for himself, carved quietly into the air and against the firm wood. He feels as if he is following a set pattern, a path marked for him since before this being was sentient, since before he even walked the warm earth. He lifts his head slightly, eyeing the stars with a friendly air and a writhing conscience.

"Ii kaze desu ne," he says.

He is not speaking to anyone at all. He is not even speaking to the stars. 

"Hn," grunts a voice behind him. Sometimes Cho Hakkai forgets that he is not alone in his little circle of air, that air cannot protect him, and that people are still there. He forgets that he cannot truly talk to himself in the presence of another. _If a man talks and no one but himself can hear what he is saying, does he truly say anything at all_? The point of speaking is to be heard, but Cho Hakkai is not the sort of man who calls attention to himself.

Sometimes, he just thinks aloud, or pretends to offer up another part of himself to the circle he is caught in.

First, he was inside the earth, curled in fetus around and around and around himself.

Then, he was with the earth, with her hand in his own, and the wheat fields were gold, like her hair.

Then, he was upon the earth, with the rain making the dirt wet and cold, with the weight of his body spilled out before him, mapping his sins in the dark.

Then he is above the earth, all ties severed, all attachments ripped asunder, and the times when he murmurs to himself are not insights to his character for he has none; no, then, he is just talking to the stars.

It is quiet again. Cho Hakkai does not disturb things in the loud way of a child or the obnoxious way of a drunk or the whining, needful way of a puppy. He does not command attention. It merely shifts to him as the world shifts, all eyes fixed on the ignominy of a murderer before the scaffold. Is he pitied? At least, he is a spectacle, with his hands tied before him, or behind him, and his eyes lifted to the sky.

_Where are you, up there?_

I must know, before I come!

Am I coming?

Do you know where I am going?

Why?

A prisoner has such a look in his eyes as he tilts his chin upwards. Cho Hakkai, watching the stars in contemplation, looks and feels light, as if he could rise any moment from the emptiness in all of him. That emptiness, echoed in his eyes. He is not asking any questions. Perhaps, he has all the answers. Perhaps, he does not need them.

There is somewhere he is going to. It is taking him a long time because he is travelling in slow, slow circles, along with the world on its axis and along with the heavenly bodies along the tedious lines of karma. This is all he needs to know to have the corners of his eyes crinkle in cosmic recognition.

_I know you_, he says to the heavens quietly as he watches the swirl of a starry night, _I know you because I am a miniature of you. We are tracing circles like ripples in the universe. It has never mattered how big the ripples are. Bigger ripples feed off into smaller ones like the sea flowing into many rivers._

This is life, with the grasshoppers: minute ripples.

This is life, with Cho Hakkai: a ripple touching upon one thousand and four others. More, now. His body is stretched out. His name does not matter. The earth is wide and round.

Life is a circle. 

On a summer night like this, Cho Hakkai knows he is returning to the earth one day, which will reach up and claim him, and he will not miss or be missed. Death does not notice the absence of the grasshoppers and the stars. Death does not mourn the loss of summer nights.

You pray for the world to mourn for your loss, but they will name it their loss, and wear black clothes for a short time, even if the sun is shining.

Cho Hakkai remembers:

On a summer night like this he sat on a porch with Kanan by his side. She was the cool curve of a body that fit into his. With her there, he did not forget the world. He did not speak to himself. He had a different name and jis hair tickled the back of his neck. Hers was freshly wet. She had just come back from bathing. In the dark summer's evening she wore only a white cotton nightdress, clinging to her moist skin, and she might as well have been naked before him. Kanan was a glowing, celestial body in their backyard, shimmering like a firefly caught in a jar.

If she stood far enough away from him he would reach out, to assure himself of her existence, round and smooth with the curving of the earth.

She rested her toes on his toes, her hand on his knee. She inclined her head so that it almost touched his shoulder.

"Look how far away the stars are," Kanan said, her hair falling in rippling waves down over both their shoulders, "taunting us to seem so close." 

When only his own hands rest on his knees Cho Hakkai watches the stars coolly, with his face smiling and his eyes lost behind. Anyone who knows him knows that he cannot see them, for his glasses have been folded and left on the kitchen table. He does not squint or try to focus so that his myopic eyes scramble to focus upon the blurred world around him, and snap back into reality. Cho Hakkai prefers to see other things. A night on the porch of his own home. A night before he knew the karmic circle and felt the earth turn and want to question the stars but feel as if he does not need to anymore.

The stars are in the heavens.

He will come to them, or they will come to him.

Or perhaps he will simply remain buried in the deep earth, with his eyes unfocused and turned upwards, and seeing as much as he ever saw on a summer night such as this.

Nothing.  
  
He is not tethered. He has become so light and so empty that he realizes he could close his eyes and lift his hands and suddenly float to the stars. If nestling in among their flaming bodies would not be such an inevitable disappointment and such a quick way to satisfy himself, he would let himself lift off.

"Look how far away the stars are," Kanan said, "taunting us to seem so close."

Cho Hakkai's lips curve into a familiar and hollow smile, as if the expression is painted onto his face, the prediction on a mahjong tile. He is good at mahjong, and card games too, but like a father with children, he lets others win, sometimes. It is funny, he thinks, that games of how the cards are dealt, how the tiles are given, are what he excels at. He tilts his head back a little, baring his neck to the world, and laughs. It is a soft sound.

"Temee," the growl comes from behind him, "what are you laughing at?"

"I thought," Cho Hakkai says as he turns, face caught in the starlight, "a cricket told a joke. It is only polite to laugh, ne?"

Genjyo Sanzou has a pretty face. His lips are curved into dour lines but Hakkai knows them when they part, when that harsh expression fades. To watch Genjyo Sanzou drink and smoke on a summer night is to wonder whether the wind blew and froze the priest's face in that expression, making him the example and the warning of a childhood myth. The air is thick and heavy with his cigarette smoke, swirling with it. The beer can be smelled, too, if you try hard enough, mixing in to crush down the usual smells of summer and freshly cut grass.

Cho Hakkai thinks, _I have taken bullets for this man, taken bullets from this man_.

"Temee," Genjyo Sanzou says again, his voice low and rough in his throat, like stone grating against stone. 

Cho Hakkai shrugs lightly and turns his face back to the stars. His world smells like laundry detergent, the cheaper store brand, and his own freshly washed hair. The things outside of his world are unattainable and deceptively close, wavering like the stars in the sky.

  
  



	2. Stars

This is part two ;_; Lemon-y goodness abounds. u_u I am actually quite proud of how this one turned out. I worked hard on it for Cali and, well, here it is, tell me whatcha think!****

Ponder the Starry Night

**Part Two: Stars**

In the darkness as Hakkai lies in bed, the covers pulled up around him, he hears the sounds Sanzou makes when readying himself for bed. The gun he sets on the bedside table. His sandals his kicks off, tossing aside. In the morning Hakkai will find one underneath a chair and one underneath the dresser drawer and he will put them side by side next to the bed so Sanzou will find them easily. 

Sanzou puts his pack of cigarettes down on the table. Next to them Hakkai hears the sound of two empty beer cans and one full one clinking down on the wood. In a rustle of sheets and a sinking of the mattress around his own body, Hakkai feels Sanzou slip into bed beside him.

He draws down the covers, and draws them up again.

In the creaking, rusty-bedspring, almost-silence, Sanzou presses his body up against Hakkai's back, just enough to show him he's there and too little to ask for anything. Hakkai remains facing the wall for a minute longer, hair falling in his eyes, the darkness of their room all-encompassing and heavy and somewhat comforting, too. His t-shirt rubs over his skin, pulling too tight in some places. He rolls over onto his back, then onto his other side, facing the oddly warm body of the dourly cold blond beside him.

"Konbanwa," Hakkai says. Every night, the same. As in their daytime lives, it is easier and more fitting to have a routine to follow. There are places where certain things go, a time for everything.

"Mh," Sanzou grunts. 

That, too, is the usual. 

Hakkai sees Sanzou now as just a gold glimmer against the pillow, and that is only because the moonlight pools from the window, against his face and hair. He is illumined in the darkness of the room. Hakkai has the odd feeling that a star has fallen brightly from the sky, swift and hard, to land beside him in his bed.

The brunette begins to smile. He brings his lips to Sanzou's chin, mouth against his jawline, breath against the soft skin of his face. That golden hair tickles over his nose.

Sanzou lifts a hand to brush through Hakkai's own, darker bangs. Parts of their bodies are thrown into endless shadow: the wrinkles in their t-shirts, halves of their faces, the knuckles on the backs of their hands and the life-lines on their palms. Sanzou's hair is bright and vivid in the bruise-colored darkness. Hakkai kisses the corner of Sanzou's mouth.

Angry purple eyes close. That hand, which has tobacco stains on the fore- and index-fingers and smells of gunsmoke, tightens in his hair, guiding him to the left. Hakkai's lips move to the left, fully against Sanzou's mouth. They part, friendly-like, companionable. Hakkai isn't a danger. 

People just shift their attention to him and suddenly they find they can't pull their eyes away.

Hakkai's hands are soft. Sanzou can feel the lines in them as they move up underneath his t-shirt, tugging at the cotton fabric. Cool air hits his skin. He arches his head back, into the pillow. Hakkai climbs up over him, a knee between both of Sanzou's. The blonde thrusts against it, shallowly, his hips moving helplessly: a butterfly pinned down, ripping its wings to break free, and finding suddenly there is no reason to struggle any longer. A butterfly in ribbons, the dark, bruise-colored purple blue of a hot summer night.

_Kanan sings to Gonou, her voice like silk and silver:_

"Kawaita kaze ga fuku  
Machi wa kogoete-iru  
Ikutsu no kisetsu ga sotto oto mo naku  
Sugisatta no darou."

Sanzou grasps the hem of Hakkai's shirt, tugging it insistently up, over the great scar on his belly. Hakkai, torn in two. Hakkai, emptied from the inside out. Hakkai, who stumbled forward through the trees on that dark night, with Sanzou's gun grasped tightly in his hands, leaving a trail of blood behind him.

He has lived this long.

He will not readily give up.

He will walk this earth until at last the hands of the dead can find his ankles and drag him down.

Sanzou runs his fingers over the scar. Hakkai turns his face away, burying it against Sanzou's neck. The blonde traces the aimless lines it makes, feels the odd swelling of flesh, hard in some spots and so weak, so soft in others. Hakkai's muscles tense. Sanzou feels his shoulders sag slightly. He traces a light circle around the center of Hakkai's belly, fingers splayed out against the now-pale rift in the brunette's abdomen.

"Yukikau hito wa mina omoi nimotsu seotte," Hakkai says to Sanzou's neck.

_Gonou cups Kanan's breast in his hand as she arches above him in the moonlight. They are in their bed. She laughs, her eyes shut, as he touches her. She is softer than anything he has ever wanted to feel, the lines of her body so, so alive. He watches her, eyes focused and intense._

"Urusee," Sanzou hisses. The circles along Hakkai's belly stop. Hakkai kisses Sanzou's neck once, twice, three times. Sanzou likes the way he lets his lips linger. Sanzou likes the way Hakkai closes his eyes.

"Itsuka wa kitto chikadzukitai ano kumo no takasa," Hakkai kisses between words, speaking between kisses. Sanzou arches his neck into the familiarly soft lips.

"Urusee," he says.

Helpless.

_In the dark, dark, dark night, the sheets tangle around them. She laughs softly until she begins to cry, the tears coursing down her soft cheeks. He hesitates, fumbles, and begins to kiss them away. He tastes salt. There is wetness against his mouth. He does this until he, too, begins to cry slow, hot tears._

Their jeans are easy to get off. Sanzou's hands on the button. Hakkai's fingers fumbling with the zipper. Sanzou's hips buck at the touch. They make familiar, hot heavy-breath sounds, their chests rising and falling quickly as their lungs swell and empty. Their chests rise and fall against each other, a rhythm growing quicker.

Sanzou kicks free and naked first. Hakkai does the same a moment later. They press their bodies together, Hakkai making high sounds in the back of his throat, Sanzou's breathing ragged and labored. The brunette curls around the blonde, hooking one slim leg up over his shoulder. Sanzou's body is thin, the ribs outlined in his pale skin. Hakkai follows the dips and curves as a blind man uses braille, learning Sanzou's body when he can, taking each opportunity as it comes.

Sanzou grabs his shoulders.

Hakkai thrusts into him, and the world is as Hakkai sees it for the both of them. It is all through Hakkai's eyes.

Sanzou is in his little cocoon of air, where they are both of them blind to the world. Things happen. People pass. Animals shuffle by with their muzzles pressed to the earth. The wind blows and it feels good as it ruffles their hair against their cheeks. The moonlight shines onto the grass and a chorus of grasshoppers lift their swelling songs to the pregnant sky. There is birth and rebirth and birth and rebirth and the world is spiraling on and on to the point where it will merely begin spiraling once more. As if it is not up to the heavenly bodies what happens or what does not happen, life lives on and everything is caught in a circle. 

Even their bodies pressed together form a circle, both of them a semicircle each, two pieces slammed suddenly and unexpectedly together. There are sounds, there are people sleeping, there is the old lady who has kindly let them rest in her house snoring, and there are the trees, branches bowed respectively to the wind as it shuffles past in the sleepy night.

The grasshoppers hum, fiddling their legs against their bodies, green hidden against green. Tomorrow will be summer. Tomorrow's tomorrow will be summer. Then winter will come after all their tomorrows are used up and they will be eaten by the birds or be covered by snow and not be there when the white melts away. In the distance the sun has set, like fire, like blood, like a violent circle of gas and heat, the biggest star of them all. That is the West. That is where they are going. And when they get there, when they reach the West and the journey is done, there will be another.

And another.

And another.

"Nh! Nh!" Hakkai is making those sounds as if he is talking to himself, but Sanzou is a part of himself now because they are sharing this pocket of air. His hips thrust forward. Sanzou's body thrusts back against them. They press close together and pull far apart. They press close together and pull far apart. They press close together and pull far apart. A pattern they follow, unchangeable and therefore irrelevant, unnoticed.

The things you cannot alter simply are.

The things you are you cannot alter.

You breathe and you fuck and you live and you die and you are the earth which exhales and exists beneath the feet of the living while worms burrow deep, deep, deep. 

The world is a great wide globe but that is just a circle and nothing else.

The sky wraps around it, filled with its many stars and the curve of the solemn moon, which sometimes smiles a crooked grin in the darkness, and the heavens make love to that which is merely dirt and flesh and blood and brittle bone. Like two bodies -- a man and a man, a man and a woman, a woman and a woman -- lying together, their semicircles suddenly pieces of a puzzle that interlock leg on shoulder arm around waist lip on lip together.

_Cho Hakkai sweeps the autumn leaves from the steps of the temple_.

"Nh! Nh!"

_"Do you want to die?" The wind in golden hair._

Outside the window the grasshoppers make a sound that swells and rises, a tidal wave of unimportant things, a great ripple riding the anticipant air.

_"Yes." The leaves swirl in circles, dancing on the wind._

Their sweat mingles. They breathe from each other's mouths.

_"And so," he looks at his hands, "I believe I must live."_

In a great rush of sound Sanzou orgasms. He cannot see but for that great white light pinpricking his eyes. He cannot hear but he knows he is making these sounds, these loud, relieved sounds, and his face is smooth, and his body is hard and stiff and warm and held up by Hakkai's.

_"Hn." Cho Gonou, Cho Hakkai; the voice is right._

The penitent man lives.

Their hands clasp, finger twined with finger. It is an intimate touch. It seems as if they are made for prayer.

But Cho Hakkai does not pray, he is appeasing the over-soul by keeping himself alive in an empty world.

And Genjyo Sanzou is a priest but he does not pray either, is living to punish himself, is clinging to life by the skin of his teeth.

_"Yukikau hito wa mina omoi nimotsu seotte." The clouds are white and lingering against the blue sky._

Hakkai lies against Sanzou's chest, their legs still twined. They are flat lines against the bed. Horizon lines. A goal is not a goal, but rather the travel time it takes to reach it. An orgasm is over soon enough, bright and burning and transitory, but the two bodies that form a circle together last before and after that brilliance fades away into the darkness of a summer night.

Their hands are clasped tightly together. Their fingers form a winding pattern, one of Sanzou's, one of Hakkai's, one of Sanzou's, one of Hakkai's, until they move on into their wrists and the wiry muscle-upon-bone of their forearms. Sanzou's arms are bent, forming right angles at the elbows. Hakkai's are stretched out straight and long.

_The clouds are passing faster and faster._

"Oyasumi nasai."

"Mh."

_"You will never see those same clouds again, no matter how hard you look for them."_

Neither of them fall asleep.

_"And soon, these clouds will fade away to the stars, which will last the endless nights -- you will never be able to see them all, and they will burn over more than a thousand of your lifetimes. Look how they taunt us! They pretend to be so close, and twinkle in laughter." Koumyou Sanzou folds his arms over his knees and watches the sky with a lost look on his face and his gray hair blown in the wind._

Cho Hakkai hears that the grasshoppers are suddenly quiet. He hears the wind in the tree branches, hushed and silent. The trees and the wind embrace each other like old lovers turned friends in the delicacy of the night. 

His toes are on Sanzou's. The arches of their feet arc together.

Cho Hakkai thinks to himself that some stars are backwards.

Look how they taunt us: seeming so far away when they are close enough to touch --_  
  
  
_


End file.
